GTA: SA crashes hard

[justrick]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

Usually the very first time I go into CJ's house. The game crashes so hard
it reboots my PC. My setup:

3.4GHz P4
1GB RAM
Geforce PCX 5750
Latest drivers

Anyone else having similar issues? I am appalled by the lack of support on
Rockstar's Web site. All you get is an e-mail address and phone number. No
patches, no forums, no FAQ...nada.

TIA!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

JustRick wrote:
> Usually the very first time I go into CJ's house. The game crashes so
> hard it reboots my PC. My setup:

It's happened very infrequently to me, but I have had several crashes when
playing.

Several times (often when really big explosions occur) the game has
completely locked up and I needed to hit the reset button.

A couple of times it just rebooted with no warning at all.

Once it displayed a more typical "This program has performed an illegal
operation and needs to be closed" type dialog box.

It's infrequent enough not to really annoy me, but it shouldn't happen at
all. It must be even worse if it happens going into CJ's house, as you can't
even save the game without going there...

--

(O) e n o n e

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:34:27 GMT, "Oenone" <oenone@nowhere.com> wrote:

>JustRick wrote:
>> Usually the very first time I go into CJ's house. The game crashes so
>> hard it reboots my PC. My setup:
>
>It's happened very infrequently to me, but I have had several crashes when
>playing.
>
>Several times (often when really big explosions occur) the game has
>completely locked up and I needed to hit the reset button.
>
>A couple of times it just rebooted with no warning at all.
>
>Once it displayed a more typical "This program has performed an illegal
>operation and needs to be closed" type dialog box.
>
>It's infrequent enough not to really annoy me, but it shouldn't happen at
>all. It must be even worse if it happens going into CJ's house, as you can't
>even save the game without going there...
>
>--
>
>(O) e n o n e
>
>

Obvious question, but I have to ask.............

Playing with the original DVD ? Or a No-DVD crack ?
Crackers aren't always clever enough to find deliberately
implanted erratic flakiness espcially aimed at no_CD/DVD
exercises.

John Lewis

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

John Lewis wrote:
> Obvious question, but I have to ask.............
> Playing with the original DVD ? Or a No-DVD crack ?

The first crashes I had were with the original DVD in the drive. I have been
playing with a NoDVD patch since though because I hate having a disc in the
drive all the time. This certainly didn't make the crashes any better.

Since the above post I've started to suffer from some fairly major
stuttering. I notice it only actually happens when I have a key pressed down
(to drive a car, for instance). As soon as I let go of all the keys, the
stuttering goes away. The stuttering affects the graphics and also the
soundtrack, it sounds like the radio is in slow motion when it's doing it.

I've tried substantially lowering my graphics settings and it made no
difference (well, apart from not looking at good). I'll try removing the
NoDVD patch and see if that makes a difference...

--

(O) e n o n e

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

Oenone wrote:
> I'll try removing the NoDVD patch and see if that makes a difference

Sadly it made no difference at all.

I briefly tried playing with a joypad instead of the keyboard and then
everything runs perfectly smoothly, so it really is pressing keys that is
killing the performance. But I just can't play with the joypad (and I really
don't want to either). How particularly frustrating..!

--

(O) e n o n e

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 21:45:02 GMT, "Oenone" <oenone@nowhere.com> wrote:

>Oenone wrote:
>> I'll try removing the NoDVD patch and see if that makes a difference
>
>Sadly it made no difference at all.
>
>I briefly tried playing with a joypad instead of the keyboard and then
>everything runs perfectly smoothly, so it really is pressing keys that is
>killing the performance. But I just can't play with the joypad (and I really
>don't want to either). How particularly frustrating..!
>

It seems as if something nasty is running in the background and still
responding to key-presses.

Run "msconfig"==> Selective Startup and turn off all Startup Items.
Reboot. When the PC comes up, press CANCEL on the msconfig
screen and check that nothing is then in your startup bar ( bottom
right of screen ). Some virus-killers like McAfee are clever enough to
slide past msconfig; turn them off separately.

John Lewis


>--
>
>(O) e n o n e
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

"John Lewis" <john.dsl@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:42b2f970.1802999@news.verizon.net...
>
> Ah, yes..... Maxtor drives..........
>


I've never had a Maxtor hard drive fail on me personally (I've owned three
of them in the last five years - still have them all), but I know people
first-hand who have had Maxtor drives fail. The most recent example was a
friend of mine who had a pair of 250GB Maxtors go down in the span of less
than a month. Like I say, while my own experience with Maxtor has been
perfect (I'm using on here on my Internet box), I wouldn't go near one now.
I count myself lucky. My top pick at the moment would be Seagate and the
number two pick would be Western Digital. Both are good drives, although
the Seagate seems to run at a cooler temperature (obviously a good thing).


> I gave up on Maxtor and IBM several years ago and have a nice pile of
> dead drivers to show for it.
>


Well, as it turned out, they didn't call the IBM drives DeathStars for
nothin'. LOL. I thought Hitachi would at least rename them to something
else.

Nothing fun about a hard drive failure. It's only happened to me once, and
that was an 850MB Quantum drive back in 1999 before CD-R/RW drives were
affordable. I ended up losing approximately 100MB of irreplaceable data
(the rest I was able to retrieve). It could have been much worse, however.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

John Lewis wrote:
> Run "msconfig"==> Selective Startup and turn off all Startup Items.

I already keep a tight reign overwhat gets run at startup on my PC (from the
Startup program group, the Run registry key for both CURRENT_USER and
LOCAL_MACHINE and also services that are running) so there's nothing in
there that I don't want running anyway. However, the problem seems to have
gone away on its own accord now, and it's all back to normal again.

Odd.

Thanks for the tips though, gave me some stuff to think about!

--

(O) e n o n e

 

[justrick]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

"John Lewis" <john.dsl@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:42b33ed4.19568740@news.verizon.net...
> On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:34:27 GMT, "Oenone" <oenone@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>>JustRick wrote:
>>> Usually the very first time I go into CJ's house. The game crashes so
>>> hard it reboots my PC. My setup:
>>
>>It's happened very infrequently to me, but I have had several crashes when
>>playing.
>>
>>Several times (often when really big explosions occur) the game has
>>completely locked up and I needed to hit the reset button.
>>
>>A couple of times it just rebooted with no warning at all.
>>
>>Once it displayed a more typical "This program has performed an illegal
>>operation and needs to be closed" type dialog box.
>>
>>It's infrequent enough not to really annoy me, but it shouldn't happen at
>>all. It must be even worse if it happens going into CJ's house, as you
>>can't
>>even save the game without going there...
>>
>>--
>>
>>(O) e n o n e
>>
>>
>
> Obvious question, but I have to ask.............
>
> Playing with the original DVD ? Or a No-DVD crack ?
> Crackers aren't always clever enough to find deliberately
> implanted erratic flakiness espcially aimed at no_CD/DVD
> exercises.

In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I doubt
there's a problem with the hard drive...

Thx,
Rick

 

[Andrew]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 09:27:38 -0400, "JustRick"
<rick@[nospam]broida.com> wrote:

>In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I doubt
>there's a problem with the hard drive...

The age of a system has nothing to do with how long it will be before
a hard disk can develop a problem, in fact if a disk has problems it
will tend to show up in the early stages as more of the disk is
written to.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

"JustRick" <rick@[nospam]broida.com> looked up from reading the entrails
of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
<snip>
>In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I doubt
>there's a problem with the hard drive...

Don't doubt it, hardware failures can happen at any time.
I had a hard drive fail after _1_ day.

Got it as a christmas present, installed it, partitioned it, formatted
it, copied data from older and smaller drive to it.
Next day it failed with a bad sector 0.

Back to the store it went and was replaced with an identical drive (same
size/make/model) that is still working fine 9 years later.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

 

[justrick]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

"Xocyll" <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote in message
news:lckeb19qjqn4579h8b5g6l1j28u1c8u6op@4ax.com...
> "JustRick" <rick@[nospam]broida.com> looked up from reading the entrails
> of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
> <snip>
>>In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I
>>doubt
>>there's a problem with the hard drive...
>
> Don't doubt it, hardware failures can happen at any time.
> I had a hard drive fail after _1_ day.
>
> Got it as a christmas present, installed it, partitioned it, formatted
> it, copied data from older and smaller drive to it.
> Next day it failed with a bad sector 0.
>
> Back to the store it went and was replaced with an identical drive (same
> size/make/model) that is still working fine 9 years later.
>
> Xocyll

All due respect, I very much doubt the hard drive is to blame for the game
crashing. Certainly I'd notice similar problems in other games,
applications, etc. Most likely it's a video issue, though I have the latest
drivers. I've also tried different resolutions, graphics settings, etc. Not
sure what to do next except return the game.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 18:48:28 -0400, "JustRick"
<rick@[nospam]broida.com> wrote:

>"Xocyll" <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote in message
>news:lckeb19qjqn4579h8b5g6l1j28u1c8u6op@4ax.com...
>> "JustRick" <rick@[nospam]broida.com> looked up from reading the entrails
>> of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>> <snip>
>>>In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I
>>>doubt
>>>there's a problem with the hard drive...
>>
>> Don't doubt it, hardware failures can happen at any time.
>> I had a hard drive fail after _1_ day.
>>
>> Got it as a christmas present, installed it, partitioned it, formatted
>> it, copied data from older and smaller drive to it.
>> Next day it failed with a bad sector 0.
>>
>> Back to the store it went and was replaced with an identical drive (same
>> size/make/model) that is still working fine 9 years later.
>>
>> Xocyll
>
>All due respect, I very much doubt the hard drive is to blame for the game
>crashing. Certainly I'd notice similar problems in other games,
>applications, etc.

Nope, depends on which sectors are faulty.

Have you run a disk-check ? Just because a system is new
is not good enough- manufacturing and test-defects do indeed occur.

Did you de-frag the partition into which you installed the game (if
not C and system-partition (C before installing the game ? Also
check the install-partition for fragmentation after installation.
When you run the Defrag Tool in Analyse mode, Windows (XP)
will always let you know if it thinks that you need to de-frag.

You WILL get random errors if the game-partition or the partition that
has virtual memory ( normally C is heavily fragfmented.

Inspect the DVD very carefully for any scratches.

You could try getting another copy.

Have you tried a delete and re-install ? You could have
had a corrupted install. Hopefully, you do not have
a "no-name" DVD rom drive......

Are you overclocking anything - by any chance ??
If so, reset everything to default and try the game again.

With a system only 2 weeks old, anything could be wrong.
Run any memory tests or other benchmarks... ?

John Lewis


--

John Lewis

"Technology early-birds always turn out to be flying guinea-pigs"

 

[Andrew]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 18:48:28 -0400, "JustRick"
<rick@[nospam]broida.com> wrote:

>All due respect, I very much doubt the hard drive is to blame for the game
>crashing. Certainly I'd notice similar problems in other games,
>applications, etc.

Not if GTA:SA is the only application that is written to the duff part
of the disk. There are a myriad of things that can cause your problem
but you cannot discount the hard disk.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

"JustRick" <rick@[nospam]broida.com> looked up from reading the entrails
of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>"Xocyll" <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote in message
>news:lckeb19qjqn4579h8b5g6l1j28u1c8u6op@4ax.com...
>> "JustRick" <rick@[nospam]broida.com> looked up from reading the entrails
>> of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
>> <snip>
>>>In my case, original DVD. The system is only about two weeks old, so I
>>>doubt
>>>there's a problem with the hard drive...
>>
>> Don't doubt it, hardware failures can happen at any time.
>> I had a hard drive fail after _1_ day.
>>
>> Got it as a christmas present, installed it, partitioned it, formatted
>> it, copied data from older and smaller drive to it.
>> Next day it failed with a bad sector 0.
>>
>> Back to the store it went and was replaced with an identical drive (same
>> size/make/model) that is still working fine 9 years later.
>>
>> Xocyll
>
>All due respect, I very much doubt the hard drive is to blame for the game
>crashing. Certainly I'd notice similar problems in other games,
>applications, etc.

It's just one of the possible problems and new doesn't mean flawless.

If the media starts going bad (and it can be a very isolated thing) the
only thing affected is what's actually written on that one tiny piece of
media. It could cause the data to become corrupted or hard to read.

If your swapfile got written over bad media, then you would likely have
errors popping up in multiple programs as various data got corrupted.

This was VERY noticeable with game floppy disks as they started to go
bad, I had a game that could not install from the floppies at all
because the installer couldn't read a sector on the disk and had no
routine to try again. Repeated attempts to copy the data to the
harddrive eventually managed to copy the data intact and the game was
installed from the HD successfully and then a new set of disks was made.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr